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Paintings and illustrations using traditional mediums by David Willson

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Painterly IllustrationIllustrations by David Willson using traditional media

David Willson is a classically trained artist who has done illustrations for book covers, children's books, packaging designs and magazine articles using both digital and traditional media. This is a collections of painted illustrations in a variety of traditional media.

Yin & Yangis a fanciful illustration based on a passage entitled The Chinese Dragon in Jorge Luis Borges Book of Imaginary Beings. Borges described the allegorical symbols of the Chinese philosophy of Yin and Yang in which the Yang, or male side of all things, is symbolized by the sky, mountains, the color blue, and the dragon. The Yin, or female side, is symbolized by the tiger, the color orange, poppies, and the valley.

This painting was done as a portfolio piece using animation cell paint (acrylic). It was composed so that it could be used as a wraparound book cover, but was eventually used for the cover of software to cast the I Ching on a computer.

Detail from Yin and Yang.

Spaceplane is an acrylic painting of a low orbit rocket plane design from Boeing for an article in Perspectives magazine, an in-house publication of Allied Signal Aerospace/Bendix King.

Cover illustration for an engineering bulletin from Allied Signal Aerospace/Bendix King, acrylic on bristol board. Before Photoshop, if you wanted a montage image, it actually made more sense to illustrate it than try to compose it out of photographs.

Evolution is an acrylic painting on panel done for the Palm Beach Festival poster competition. It depicts an iconic Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater movement reminiscent of a flock of pelicans. The progression of vignettes increase the elevation of the viewers point of view from ground level to earth orbit.

Fathom Nine, acrylic on panel. The painting depicts am underwater scene with nine dolphins swimming over a sunken pyramid. It is intended to be a natural scene that evokes thoughts of lost civilizations and ancient mysticism. The dolphins are swimming in groups of five and four (totaling nine), and the pyramid has three sides. The numbers 3:4:5 represents the golden ratio in pyramid shapes. The Great Pyramid at Giza is the closest example of a golden pyramid.

Book cover illustration for Tuf Voyaging by George RR Martin, Baen Books. Acrylic on illustration board.

Detail from Tuf Voyaging cover

The cover art of two children's books for Health Communications, Inc., which contained 45 watercolor illustrations.

Interior watercolor illustration for Spike and Ben, A Loving Story About Angry Feelings by Pamela Thaut, HCI Books.